Pitty Party
Someone will probably be pissed at me for posting this but what the hell. I've been surfing through the "recently updated" blogs list and I can't get over the crap that people are publishing. There was somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 blogs devoted to some poor schmuck with cancer. Now I suppose I should feel sorry for the schmucks but quite frankly I couldn't care less. Who wants to read about some guy tossing his cookies anyway?

There never seems to be a shortage of people playing the poor woe is me card.

TV shows are good for this. I saw a preview of some "newsworthy" item that was showing some legless idiot playing basketball. My first thought was damn those mechanical legs have really come a long ways!". But oh no...this guy with no legs was playing without a prosthesis! He's just bopping along on the floor with only his stumps! And this show is saying how "good" he is and how courageous! Crap crap and did I say crap?!

I find the supervisors at my night job amusing...sometimes
I find the supervisors at my night job amusing...sometimes. Other times they just piss me off. At night I moonlight as a custodian at the University of Kansas (KU).

A few days ago two custodians decided to have an argument over what radio station they were going to listen to. They couldn't agree so they both turned their boom boxes on and proceeded to try and drown out the others box. It apparently got quite loud. However it really didn't cause any harm since the building was closed and the only two who had to listen to this deluge of sound was the two custodians.

However a supervisor walked up on them and passed the incident on to her supervisor and she has actually banned radios from all buildings on campus during the night shift. That was her solution. She could have just told them to knock it off or even have gone so far as to not let them play their radios for a time. But no, she bans all radios from all the buildings. Don't punish just those two when you can punish 100 seems to be her philosophy.

Wavering on My Iraqi Abuse Stance
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact

This article is based upon a New Yorker article set to come out on the newsstands soon. To see it now go to the link above. It talks about how Rumsfield okayed the use of a special black ops interrogation program that was put into place to get more information from Al Queda insurgents of Al Queda operations shortly after 9/11.

Some people will say the secret ops program had no place in a civilized world. Others will say that war is war and to consider the situation in the Middle East after 9/11 anything but war is naive. Personally, as unpleasant as it now appears, I think that it had it's place and usefulness.

Even some of those of you who may be willing to look the other way may try to argue that the techniques involved such as the sexual humiliation involved was out of line. To those people I would point out as does the article, the Arab world has a special fear of sexual degradation. That is why the techniques proved so successful.

We could get into a heated discussion about this for a very long time. However, there is one point that everyone else seems to be bypassing. That look of glee coming from the guards as they pose for pictures. They are clearly shown to be apparently having a good time. This is what really sticks in my craw. This is what makes it unacceptable. If you believe in heaven and hell, Donald Rumsfield and his cronies will probably end up down below. However, like it or not, we pay him to do what we as "civilized" Americans are unwilling to do. Those smiles on the guards faces however, well it makes me want to smack the crap right out of them.

The question remains however. Who do we punish? Do we punish anyone?

Personally, I think that we as civilians don't have the right to do anything. We weren't involved in the decision process that led up to this catastrophe nor did we really want to be. So I think we need to step back and allow the government and military to take care of there own. Some of you will say bullshit, they work for us, we have the right. I say not so fast. The government acts on our behalf everyday and makes innumerable decisions that we are unaware of. If we see decisions being made that we don't like then there is always the upcoming election and the court system. I can almost hear you saying that by the time the election rolls around the facts won't be as clear in your mind as they are now. Well if that holds true then I'd say it wasn't all that damn important to you to begin with.

Abuse in Iraq
I often wonder why it's always the low man on the totem pole that is blamed when things go wrong. Even in my place of work it's always guys like me that get the blame. Why isn't my supervisor the blame? After all isn't she there to supervise? Is it not her job to oversee?

And so it is in Iraq. The MP's that committed the abuse are the scapegoats. They say they were under orders to do these things to the prisoners. So I say let's go after those who gave the orders. The MP's were doing what they were told to do. Some people will say, "Well nobody forced them.". Well you enlist in the service and then refuse to obey a direct order and see how far you get.

Donald Rumsfield seems to be the only higher up that is getting any slack out of this. He was what 3,000 miles away when all this happened? Yeah let's hang him he's obviously the culprit. One thing is for sure, it's an election year.

I'd say the highest ranking officer at the prison is the guy we should be hanging, as well as those who gave the direct orders to abuse the prisoners.